Lee explores philosophy throughwater and 3-D in ‘Life of Pi'

Taiwanese director Ang Lee answers questions during a press conference announcing their new film "Life of Pi," in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012. "Life of Pi" is an upcoming 3D adventure film based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Yann Martel, staring Suraj Sharma and directed by Lee. (AP Photo/Wally Santana)

Photo By Jake Netter/Associated Press

This film image released by 20th Century Fox shows Suraj Sharma in a scene from "Life of Pi." Ang Lee's “Life of Pi” will open the 50th annual New York Film Festival. The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced Monday that Lee's adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Yann Martel will premiere at the festival on Sept. 28. (AP Photo/20th Century Fox, Jake Netter)

Photo By 20th Century Fox

"Life of Pi"

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Roger's take

Life of Pi (four stars) A miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery. Inspired by a worldwide best-seller that seemed unfilmable, it is a triumph over its difficulties. It is also a moving spiritual achievement, a movie whose title could have been shortened to "Life." The story involves the 227 days that its teenage hero (Suraj Sharma) spends drifting across the Pacific in the same lifeboat as a Bengal tiger. The movie quietly combines various religious traditions to enfold its story in the wonder of life. How remarkable that these two mammals, and the fish beneath them and birds above them, are all here. One of the year's best. 125 minutes. PG (mild violence)

CHICAGO — “This is the best use of 3-D I've ever seen,” I said to Ang Lee. And I meant it.

His “Life of Pi” is an astonishment, not least because it never uses 3-D for its effect, but only as a palette for the story as a whole. There are, for example, shots where the point of view is below the surface of the sea, looking up at the boat and into the sky beyond. The surface of the sea seems to be an invisible membrane between the water and the air. I've never seen anything like it.

“Actually, years ago,” he said, “I thought this was a pretty impossible movie to make technically. It's so expensive for what it is. You sorta have to disguise a philosophical book as an adventure story.

“I thought of 3-D half a year before ‘Avatar' was on the screen. I thought water, with its transparency and reflection, the way it comes out at you in 3-D, would create a new theatrical experience and maybe the audience or the studio would open up their minds a little bit to accept something different.”

That's what happened. I knew the premise as I went in — a young boy floats across the Pacific sharing a boat with a Bengal tiger — and frankly it sounded like a Disney movie. It's far from it.

Over the years I have decided that Lee is one of the wisest and kindest men I've met. That emerged as he discussed water as a medium.

“I wanted to use water because the film is talking about faith, and it contains fish, life and every emotion for Pi,” he said. “And air is God, heaven and something spiritual and death. That's how I see it. I believe the thing we call faith or God is our emotional attachment to the unknown.

“I'm Chinese; I believe in the Taoist Buddha. We don't talk about a deity, which is very much like this book; we're not talking about religion but God in the abstract sense, something to overpower you.”

During Pi's journey, he survives against all odds and forms a union with the tiger during which they both step outside any reality they know. One of the strange developments is that the tiger doesn't kill the boy. That's not a spoiler because there is ever so much more to it than that.

Yet there is an early scene, set at a circus, where it is unforgettably demonstrated that wild animals are truly wild and only a reckless person would sentimentalize one.

It was a wise decision, I said, to include the scene showing that nature is not sentimental.

“You have to,” Lee said. “Sentiment is a human thing; it's humanity, it's artificial, it's our wishful thinking. And it's a trap because when you make a movie you project your own will and it's very likely you sentimentalize. A tiger doesn't look back. It's just the way it is.

“That will help younger viewers, who think tigers are their friends. They watch too many Disney movies. In the movie, the father's lesson is specifically — if you think like that, you'll be killed. Survive and respect nature and respect animals is what you should do.

“However, at the end he says: ‘My father is absolutely right, but I see something else, something else I cannot prove it, but I see it, I feel it.' I think that's human emotion. To me, his love for the tiger is a one-way street; it's unrequited love.”

An amazing aspect is how realistic the tiger and every other animal appears to be. One knows special effects must be involved, and yet ... that IS a tiger, right?

Lee said he took the real tiger as a reference point to begin with. “There are 23 shots in the movie of real tigers. There are four of them modeled after the most beautiful one, whose name is King. I don't think we can do tigers just out of our imagination, at least for now, and project our wills and make them look like real animals without humanizing them.

“Some of the real tigers made it into the movie. But the animated tigers might have taken three months or six months. Anything that didn't look real, at least to our impression, had to be redone. Tenaciously.”